In Vitis Veritas: Wine, Wisdom & Awakening

The late afternoon sun shone like a brilliant golden daffodil above me and, before me, its reflected image filled the cup of flaxen liquid in my hand, a second sun blessing me with its light and warmth.

The Valley of the Moon Russian River Valley Chardonnay 2008 is as clean and clear as the ocean sky, as fragrantly floral as blooming jasmine, as soft and juicy as ripe honeydew at a picnic. It is as sweet as summer stone fruit and as bright as green apples on their way into a pie. It is as simple as playing the sprinklers and as familiar as old pair of flip-flops. It is a July day in America, the Star Spangled Banner in fluid form, a palatable expression of timelessness and the perennial pleasures of summertime.

And it tastes good.

Cheers.

Moving is not fun, no matter how you slice it.  But if you’re with the right person (or people), settling into your new home can be, and with this in mind, I had big plans.  My vision was of Tom and I sitting on the couch in our new apartment, wearing grubby clothes and surrounded my boxes, a lamp on the floor casting muted light as we opened one of the good bottles I’d been saving for a while and toasted this next step.  Well, I think I am pretty good at giving my visions life, but this time it didn’t really work out that way.  After three days of hauling boxes up staircases between alternating work schedules, our new apartment was a disaster and our old one needed cleaning.  Tom moved while I worked; I moved while Tom worked.  It was the Fourth of July before we could start unpacking.  It was a warm afternoon.  The ocean waves were crashing 100 yards away.  People were partying all around us.  It was Independence Day.  Good wine?  Yeah, right.  We needed beer.

I know this is a big variation for us here at In Vitis Veritas, but there comes a time in every man’s life when he has got to veer away from the expected, the envisioned, the presumed, the habitual, and take a new path.  Maybe it wasn’t the path you originally anticipated; maybe it’s the opposite.  Maybe it’s a far cry from your normal routine.  Let’s hope so.  In fact, make it so.  There is no use holding on to a vision of something that simply can’t be when you could embrace the beauty of what is. Throw your wine key to the side, leave those fancy wine glasses in the cabinet, and release your inner wild child, your cutoff jeans and classic rock, Independence Day beer-drinking fabulous self.

Pop a top and cheers.

My father Bob is perhaps Rosenblum Cellars’ most loyal customer.  For years, he’s been buying and drinking and extolling the virtues of their various Zinfandels sourced from all over California, Paso Robles to Livermore to Lake County.  During his last visit to San Francisco while I was still living there, we ventured over the Bay Bridge to their winery on the water in Alameda and left with three cases of wine in the trunk of his rental car.  We drank it at my sister’s wedding.  Since I was well below 21 years of age, he’s been educating me on how good their wines are, with one exception: “Don’t buy that Vintner’s Cuvee XXXI or whatever it is,” referring to their bottom line non-vintage California Zin, “but the rest of them are just superior!”

I am at my father’s house now, as a matter of fact, a beautiful home in the desert perched on the edge of isolation with cool tile floors and lounge chairs under an umbrella built into the shallow end of the pool.  A cactus garden with tall twisting cacti from the yard of Groucho Marx curves gracefully around windblown Shoestring Acacias in the backyard.  Two wine coolers are filled with the Rosenblum Annette’s Reserve Zinfandel, Redwood Valley 2006, a killer Zin that he found at a killer discount—around $12 a bottle at Vons supermarket according to Pops, which is a significant mark-down from the $35 list price.  Dad is not one to spend more than $15 or so on a bottle of wine for an everyday dinner, so this sale was the deal of the century for him.

Last night, however, was a special occasion because, well, I am here.  Oh, right, and it’s Father’s Day weekend.  Anyway, Dad made a Costco trip for some barbeque supplies and came home with around eight bottles of wine.  Most of these ranged between $7.99 and $10.99 with the exception of one, the Rosenblum Rockpile Road Vineyard Zinfandel 2006, which he splurged on for a whooping $24.99 (a big deal for him, but a great price considering the bottle’s $35 list price).  We grilled salmon for dinner and with it we drank a light California Pinot Noir, but this blog is about the Rockpile Zin, which my brother Doug opened when the fish was gone, the plates were stacked, and the men had lit cigars.

I thought I was confused.  I thought maybe I was smelling the cigars, or salmon residue on my fingers holding my glass.  I walked away from the smoky table, rinsed my fingers in the pool and tried again.  The wine smelled like oysters.  Not fishy, but definitely oceanic, like saltwater, like a sand dollar you took home from the beach, like shellfish.  It was totally devoid of fruit.  I sipped it.  It tasted fine, as far as a wine without a nose goes, as if I was drinking it with severe nasal congestion, but at any rate the weird sea smell was not reflected in the palate.  I turned to look at the table and watched as the small party all stuck their noses in their wine, too.  I wasn’t the only one who smelled it!

For thirty minutes I left it alone, waiting for the weirdness to blow off.  It didn’t. I know their wines, and this was not the robust, spicy, fruit-driven pleasure bomb I had been looking forward to.  I reached out to my go-to resource for all things wine, my former boss and sommelier Tom Capo: is there a flaw I’m not familiar with that makes a wine smell this way?  Some bacteria?

“Some whites grown in limestone soils can smell like shell.  Chablis as well, since most of the subsoil in Chablis is actually millennia old ground up oyster shell fragments” read his return text message.  “Never had a red where this type of aroma was the primary aromatic…I’d be pretty wary…”

And so, it remains a mystery.  Although we only bought the one, I can say with confidence that it was a freaky bottle, and that this strange sensory experience almost certainly will not be echoed in other Rosenblum Rockpile Zinfandels.  In fact, I urge you to try it and let me know!  I am contemplating shooting the winery an email out of pure curiosity…if I receive any insight into the Mystery of the Crustaceous Zin, I will pass it along.  For now, I’m going to go pop one of those Rosenblum Annette’s Reserves.

Cheers, and Happy Fathers’ Day!

Twenty minutes before we were due to leave for the hike, it started raining.  We knew it was coming; the morning sun’s fleecy warmth had slowly given way to a zip-up, leaf-green fleece as the clouds crawled over Carmel Valley from the Pacific Ocean like dry ice from a bucket, chilling the air with moisture and shadow.  The hike we had planned was to the top of the northern end of the Santa Lucia Mountain Range where, looking over Carmel Valley and the Monterey Peninsula, we were supposed to be able to see the curvature of the Earth.  We were in the mood for adventure—we wanted to go there.  I looked at Tom and shrugged with partially real and partially feigned disappointment.

“Well,” I said, “Bummer.  I guess we can just go wine tasting in the village instead.”

Carmel Valley Road is long and meandering and deposits you into a compact hamlet hugged by green and golden hillsides.  It is speckled with a handful of restaurants, a market or two, and an abundance of wine tasting rooms.  Bernardus Winery, in the center of town, is about as sprawling a facility as there is in Carmel Valley Village, but when we arrived that rainy Tuesday afternoon, the large tasting room was blessedly empty and the only soul inside was Stanley Rogalsky, Tasting Room Manager.

Soon we were on our way.  We started out easy.  The Monterey County Sauvignon Blanc 2008 was like strolling through rolling foothills, the smell of fresh grass lifting from the packed ground beneath our feet, bright lemon-yellow sunshine reflecting off the dark green gooseberry leaves of the bushes lining the path.  Sloping gently upward, next we tasted four Chardonnays from three vintages.  The highlight of the four, the Rosella’s Chardonnay, Santa Lucia Highlands 2006, brought us into a grove of Golden Delicious Apple trees where fallen, ripe fruit was baking in the afternoon sun where it lay scattered over rocky, mineral-rich soil.  Onward and upward we trekked into the first shade of the mountain’s incline.  A sampling of Monterey County Pinot Noir 2007 carried us over the damp hummus of the forest floor, past patches of wild mushrooms and blackberry brambles.  I could have stayed here a while, settling into a cushion of soft earth under a canopy of gnarled oak trees, eating the juicy, dark red fruit growing around me, but like all good adventurers, we forged on.  We sipped some water.  We ate some breadsticks.  We did what we had to do to continue.

Finally, breathless with weariness and exhilaration, we got where we were going.  The Reserve Marinus Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, a single-vineyard bottling from upper Carmel Valley and the Bernardus flagship wine, delivered us to the summit.  Up here the air was clear.  Cedar plank smoke curled from chimneys on from the valley floor below us as we took a seat on a fallen log and devoured our packed lunch of black cherry and plum compote with hearty bread, dark chocolate and cinnamon-spiced coffee.  My head was in the ethers.  I breathed in Carmel Valley.  I saw the curvature of the Earth.

Rain or no, we got our adventure.  I think Stanley said it best when, in speaking of drinking different kinds of wine, he said, “They all get you to the same place—it just depends on how you want to get there.”

Cheers.

Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don’t even notice it.  ~Sakyong Mipham

This weekend, I planned a special evening at home.  The fridge was stocked with fresh veggies delivered a few days earlier by one of the true loves of my life, Fresh Farm To You, and a quick trip to the farmer’s market supplemented the only lacking produce, a big bunch of parsley for the potatoes.  At the market, I picked up a baguette, some artisan dark chocolate-covered honeycomb, and a round of Cyprus Grove Purple Haze goat cheese.  It wasn’t until I was perusing the wine aisle that I got stuck.  See, my special evening at home was for me and me alone.  I had come across the rare opportunity for a little solo time, a luxury so often forgotten in today’s world of chaotic connectedness, and I was very much looking forward to a little celebration of life with a long-lost friend—myself.  The challenge presented to me, however, wasn’t fear of loneliness nor the fear of eating the whole baguette to myself.  I wanted sparkling wine.  I needed sparkling wine.  But I knew I wasn’t going to drink a whole bottle, God help me.  My eyes darted back and forth between the bottles of bubbly and the still whites on display next to them.  Unwilling to compromise with a Sauvignon Blanc or a still Chard, my lips pursed, eyebrows furrowed.

Suddenly my wild eyes landed on a small, simple, miniature milk bottle-like container stuck on the top shelf, all alone.  It was called Karma California Brut, and it was the cutest little bottle of wine I have ever seen.  With the morning’s yoga still cursing through my body, finding this petite 187 ml gift felt like some cosmic intervention, a true Karmatic return for taking some time away from the world to reconnect with my higher self.

Back at my house, I sat on the porch, listening to the birds while I gazed lovingly at my cheese plate and sipped my Karma.  Once the twist-off was twisted off, delicate little bubbles danced toward the sky like so many tiny, ethereal yogis pushing proudly and elatedly into upward dog.  A surprisingly potent nose gave off rich scents of baking spice and nutmeg sprinkled over cooked apple that made my soul feel at home again.  The palate, zinging with tart lemon crème pie, fresh pear and effervescence, was the yin to my Purple Haze yang.  Even the milk bottle-esque container served a duel purpose as built-in flute…Yet another lesson in simplicity.  At $4.99, clearly I had done something right to deserve this good Karma.

The back of the bottle contains a message from the creator of Karma California Brut, a man identified simply as Patrick.  It reads, “Every day is a celebration!  That’s why I created KARMA.  Always have fun, be yourself and live consciously.”

Cheers to that.